


When Asariel Fell

by justbreathe



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Coda, Falling Angels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-20
Updated: 2013-05-20
Packaged: 2017-12-12 09:22:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/809966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justbreathe/pseuds/justbreathe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Supernatural 8x23 Coda. A story of one angel's fall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Asariel Fell

It struck them like thunder, a crack in the sky, and Asariel's hand stilled on its track to plunging a blade into the body of his brother. They looked up as one, just a group of gullible birds would, ready and willing to drown in the rain.

Light burst around them, so violent Asariel drew his form upon itself, wings enveloping him. Heat seared through them, dug into his very essence and burst inside him, a bomb which shook him internally as it ripped him apart externally. It was replaced in a lasting instant with freezing cold, and the sensation of plummeting, and human skin, a thing Asariel hadn't felt in so long he actually marvelled at it in the split second he was lucid. And then everything was a blur, the earth rising below and heaven becoming a swirling mass swallowed by darkness, and within that moment Asariel knew as all of his brethren knew. He heard their screams, their pleas, their fear, and it overcame him in the same manner. All at once, he was absolutely _terrified_ , overwhelmed by panic and nothing more. His grace, his connection to his kind, his very home was being stripped from him with every millisecond, the air whipping around him real and physical. Helplessness was all he was, all he knew, and he grasped at anything he could hold on to. His second in command's screams, unintelligible spare for the prayer interspersed between - _oiead_ \- _please, father_ ; the form of the brother he'd been about to kill, plummeting near him, so close he could feel his soul breaking apart. With human hands, however, he couldn't reach, didn't have the strength to fight the wind with blood and bone when his own true form was streaking out behind him and dying.

Pain, abrupt and powerful, and his own body convulsed with an unheard scream, fire burning in desperate coals deep within his eyes and mouth as his wings were torn from his very being by his descent. Falling, falling, dying, home so far away and steadily farther, unreachable, and there were so many of them, _all of them_. And then there was nothing.

He woke in darkness, the sounds of the world muffled around him. He was cold, and his entire body hurt. How did he move with muscles such as these? Why should he, when all he wanted was to die? Conscious will pressed him up, but when his hands sank into the ground, he collapsed forward, his mouth and throat filling with mud. Panicking, he thrashed, choked, threw himself to one side, and writhed and jumped in a terrible imitation of a fish to the edge of the hole he was in. An angel, flopping like riverbed thing to save his own life. Shame burned where the rest of him was cold. Where were his brethren and sistren? Where was the warmth of grace, and the presence of the cosmos of heaven? He was dead, a limb cut off, sensation dulled and everything else painful, and _why?_ Mud caking on his lips, blood covering the rest of him, his clothing torn and soaked through, shivering and starving and pathetically _mortal_ , Asariel closed his eyes and screamed. Screamed because there was no fairness in the universe, there was nothing good left, when he had fought so hard and lost so much, only to lose it all in the end. Where was God, their father? Where was the god they'd clung to for so long, in the form of an avenging angel with too much heart? They, the struggling few who had never lost hope. They who had died, lost everything for a belief that was now so plainly futile.

When his throat could no longer create noise, when he had slept so long he no longer knew if his muscles would function, when there was nothing else to do but breathe and move, Asariel rose from his temporary grave. With nothing but the humanity he couldn't name or explain and the anger to drive him, he walked.

For days he travelled, sunset to sunrise to sunset again. One morning dawned on a town, and Asariel collapsed seeing it, his body giving out. He woke again in strange surroundings, the back end of a car which took him to a small hospital in the middle of nowhere. Unsure, scared, he gave them his name, and they gave him a sad look and rest a hand on his back. Men came to him, asked him who he was and where he'd come from, and he answered them with the truth, rose out of the bed in rage when they didn't believe him. He wrecked the room, nearly killed one of the two men before they chained him and dragged him off. A wild thing, he remained caged from place to place, through to the last one, where when he tried to fight back they stuck him with needles until he couldn't move or think. Everything was white, and there, in the room of quiet, warm blankness, for the first time in days, he slept.

As the weeks passed, Asariel learned to keep quiet. They called him John and brought him food which he ate carefully. Eventually, when they trusted him to keep his temper, they let him wander the community rooms, and watched him sadly from the doorway when he curled up in his chair at group sessions. They cleaned him, and talked to him three times a day, although he never talked back. They gave him medicine which made him tired, and after a while decided to let him keep the bible he'd claimed from the main room as a safety object. He said nothing, but only listened, listened for the call of his siblings, for the day when he would be needed again.


End file.
